13 technologies fit for the Founding Fathers

You think your workload is tough? Imagine how it must have been for the Founding Fathers around this time in 1776, when they had to sit down, write, and ratify the Declaration of Independence. Let's give our forefathers a high-tech leg up. Here are 13 technologies—one for each colony—that would have expedited the Revolution and the drafting of that key document.

Evernote

The men on the “Committee of Five,” who drafted the Declaration of Independence, lived in five different states. How did they get notes to one another? Nobody knows, but a simple tool like Evernote would have let them share ideas and clippings from the Massachusetts Spy much more easily.

No time to train a voice-recognition tool because the British are coming? Try switching to handwriting and having it automatically digitized and transcribed into text, thanks to a digital pen such as the Livescribe.

FFIM (Founding Father Instant Messaging) would have been great. Skype Premium would have been even better.

Through voice and video chats, the founders would have been able to convene in groups of ten to freely discuss the finer points of language used in the Declaration. Should it be tyranny or oppression? Decisions…

A true patriot can’t be lugging an 8-pound laptop all the way from Georgia to Philadelphia. An ultralight companion such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 would have fit comfortably in even the smallest of saddlebags.

Nation-building can’t happen through email alone. It’s better to get the group working together by issuing everyone their own HD webcam—if only to see the grimace on Ben Franklin’s face over questionable grammar choices.

Getting 56 people to sign a single document is an inefficient way to go about doing things.

With a simple printer, everyone could have taken their own copy home for the night—you know, so the Founding Mothers could weigh in on things before anybody signed. A mobile printer would have made it easy to take the party anywhere.

Better yet, get rid of the pens and papers altogether. An e-signing system such as DocuSign Professional would have allowed the Declaration’s signers to autograph the famous document when and where they chose, no pen required…although, admittedly, the finished product would have looked much less impressive on display at the National Archives.